How to Stay Motivated in
Bodybuilding, Weight Lifting and Weight Training

Here's something I've done for years that helps me stay motivated and keeps
me from slacking off (most of the time, that is) in my workouts.
Keeping a record of what you do and how you do it is vital to bodybuilding
success.
I think keeping a journal is one of the best things I've done to help myself
consistently improve. If you keep track of what you've done in the past, it will
be easier for you to see what works for you. You can then repeat these actions
to insure your future success.
"The palest of ink is better than the best memory."
I've never understood why people want to come to the gym time after time,
repeating exactly what they've done before. That is not progress, my friend.
In order to improve and make gains, your training must be progressive in some
manner. You can make progress 3 different ways:

1. Do more weight than the previous session
2. Do more reps with the same weight
3. Do more work within a set time frame

If you don't remember exactly what you did in your previous training sessions,
how do you expect to exceed it?
I'll be willing to bet if you'll finally discipline yourself to start keeping a
training journal, you'll increase your gains or start gaining again (if you've
been stuck for a while) within 30 days or less.
You've known for years you should be keeping a training journal and you've told
yourself you're gonna do it... but you still haven't done it!
Just do it, OK?!
Geez, do I always have to drag you to success?

TRAINING JOURNAL TIPS

* Write down the time of day you worked out.

* Write down how much weight you used in your exercises and the number of reps.

* Write down how the movements felt, i.e. "50s are too light."

* Write down how you looked and what was going on in your mind.

* Write down what you wore or what music you listened to.

* Write down what you ate and when you ate it.

* Write down how you looked when you woke up, went to sleep, etc.

* Write down how much cardio you did.

* Write down how much you weigh.

* Write down the other aspects of you life i.e., if you had a good day, a bad
day, it was raining, you had a fight with your girlfriend. This will help you
attribute outside factors into your performance in the gym.

Let's suppose you had a bad workout on February 1st and you can't figure out why
since your diet and supplementation were the same as your last training session.
If you see an entry in your journal that you got a bad grade on a test that
morning, you might find the reason your training sucked that day was that your
head wasn't into it. This would stop you from radically changing your training,
diet or supplementation based on bad information.

A training and dietary journal will be your best friend when assessing progress.
You can download a copyright free training journal : Click
Here
This is a training journal I had designed for use in one of my books. Feel free
to make as many copies of this as you like for your personal use only.